Ookla and Hull ISP KC Launch 1000Mbps Capable Broadband Speed Tester

The incumbent telecoms operator for Hull in Yorkshire (England), KC, has teamed up with Ookla to launch a new broadband speed tester that’s capable of “accurately” measuring the internet download and upload speeds of even the fastest 1Gbps (Gigabits per second) capable fibre optic FTTP connections.

Understandably the move is designed to help promote KC’s new Lightstream fibre optic (FTTP) broadband service, which offers speeds of up to 350Mbps and is currently being rolled out to pass 15,000 local homes and businesses by the end of 2012.

Andrew Whale, Director of Engineering at KC, said:

“When people first get fibre broadband connected they’re blown away by the speeds, but we found that other speed checkers didn’t always return an accurate result when testing our fastest service. [So] we decided to develop a speed checker based on Ookla technology.

As well as letting customers know exactly how fast their Lightstream service is, because the new speed checker is directly connected to our next generation core network we can test even faster speeds than those we’re offering at the moment.”

In fairness it’s difficult to describe any anecdotal speed tester as “accurate” because service speed can be affected by a multitude of different factors, which may or may not return a result that reflects the actual capability of your physical connection or internet performance in general. But they’re still useful toys that often help to identify abnormal performance issues.

Likewise linking the new tester to KC’s core network will naturally showcase optimum results for KC’s own customers. In any case you can give it a try below, not that there’s much point unless you’re one of a tiny portion of people with a true 1Gbps connection. Lucky devils.

In reality some testers can already check 1Gbps connectivity.

KCs Fibre Speed Test
http://fibretest.kc.kcom.com